Janice Day Part 37

The old Town Hall had been repainted. Had it not been for the opposition of Elder Concannon, the young folks would have collected money for the repainting of the Union Church. However, they cleaned everything around it--yard and all--till it was as spick and span as it could be. And the burial ground in the rear of the church was made beautiful, too. The edges of the paths were trimmed, the paths themselves raked, and all the tottering headstones were set up straight.

Gates were rehung and fences straightened all over town. A smell of fresh paint rivaled the scent of the bursting lilac blooms. Never had Poketown been so busy.

The cleaning-up process went on inside the houses as well as out. Of course, among pure-blooded New English housewives, such as the majority of Poketown matrons were, there were few drones. They prided themselves on their housekeeping.

Earlier than usual the carpets went out on the lines, the curtains at chamber and sitting-room windows were renewed, there was a smell of soap and water in every entry, as one pushed the door open, and altogether Poketown was generally turned out of doors, aired, dusted, and brought back again into thoroughly clean rooms.

The old Day house had its "ridding up," too. Janice gave her aunt considerable help; but Mrs. Day was not the slovenly housekeeper she had been when first the girl had come to Poketown. Even Uncle Jason kept himself more neatly than ever before. And he went to the barber's at frequent intervals.

Janice once went down to the dock to see the _Constance Colfax_ come in.

There was the usual crowd of loafers waiting for the boat--all perched along the stringpiece of the wharf.

"But I declare!" thought Janice, her eyes dancing, "somebody certainly _has_ 'slicked 'em up,' as Mrs. Scattergood would say. Whoever would believe it! Walky has got a new s.h.i.+rt on--and straw cuffs, too--and a necktie! My goodness me! And the hotel keeper really looks as though his wife cared a little about his appearance. And Ben Hutchins wears whole boots now, and has washed his face, and had a shave.

"I must admit they don't look so much like a delegation from the poorfarm as they did the day. I came in on the _Constance Colfax_. There has been a change in Poketown--there most certainly _has_ been a change!" and the girl laughed delightedly.

It was marked everywhere. It even seemed to Janice as though people whom she met on the street stepped quicker than they once had!

Janice knew she had given her own folks--Uncle Jason, and Aunt 'Mira, and Cousin Marty--a push or two in the right direction. She had helped Hopewell Drugg, too; and maybe she had instigated the waking up of several other people. But not for a moment did she realize--healthy, thoughtless girl that she was--how much Poketown owed to her on Clean-Up Day.

That was one great occasion in the old town. Although the selectmen had allowed two days in which the farmers' wagons were to cart away the rubbish for the householders, the removal men had hard work to fill their contract.

Some curbs were piled shoulder high with boxes of ashes, old bedsprings, broken furniture, decayed mattresses, yard rakings, unsightly pots and pans hidden away for decades in mouldy cellars--debris of so many kinds that it would be impossible to catalogue it!

For two days, also, hundreds of rubbish fires burned, and the taint of the smoke seemed to saturate every part of Poketown. Janice declared that all the food on the supper table at the Day house seemed to have been "slightly scorched."

"By jinks!" declared Marty, gobbling his supper with an appet.i.te that never seemed to lag. "I bet I burned three wagon-loads of stuff 'sides what I set outside on the street for 'em to take away. No use talkin', Dad, you got ter build a new pen and yard for the shoats."

"Whuffor?" demanded his father, eyeing him slowly.

"'Cause the old boards and rails was so rotten that I jest burned 'em up," declared his son. "You know folks could see it from the street, an'

it looked untidy."

"Wa-al," drawled Uncle Jason, with only half a sigh.

Janice could scarcely keep from clapping her hands, this so delighted her. She compared this with some of the conversation at the Day table soon after the time she had arrived in Poketown!

CHAPTER XXVIII

"NO ODOR OF GASOLINE!"

During the winter now pa.s.sed, Janice had watched the progress of the new school under Nelson Haley's administration with growing confidence in that young man. Nelson was advancing, as well as his pupils and the school discipline. Educators from other towns in the state--even in neighboring states--had come to visit Poketown's school.

Janice could not help having a thrill of pride when she learned of these visitations and the appreciation shown by other educators of Nelson Haley's work. She did not so often see the young man in a situation where they could talk these wonders over; for Nelson was very, very busy and gave both his days and evenings to the work he had set for himself the fall before.

The girl might no longer honestly complain of Nelson's lack of purpose.

He had "struck his gait" it seemed; it was as though he had suddenly seen a mark before him and was pressing onward to that goal at top speed.

When he and Janice met as they did, of course, at church and occasionally at evening parties, the teacher and the girl were the very best of friends But tete-a-tetes were barred. Was it by Janice herself?

Or had Nelson deliberately changed his att.i.tude toward her?

Sometimes she tried to unravel this mystery; but then, before she had gone far in her ruminations, she began to wonder if she _wanted_ Nelson to change toward her? That question frightened her, and she would at once refuse to face the situation at all!

Once Nelson told her that a small college in middle Ma.s.sachusetts offered a line of work that he believed he would like to take up--if he was "doomed to the profession of teaching, after all."

"And does the doom seem so very terrible?" she asked him, laughingly.

"I admit that I can _do_ things with the scholars," he said, gravely. "I have just begun to realize it. It seems easy for me to make them understand. But the profession doesn't give one the freedom that the law does, for instance."

Janice had made no further comment, nor did Nelson advance anything more regarding the work offered by the college in question.

She had her own intense interests, now and then. Clean-Up Day was past but its effect in Poketown was ineradicable. Janice was satisfied that there were enough people finally awake in the town to surely, if slowly, revolutionize the place.

How could one householder drop back into the old, s.h.i.+ftless, careless manner of living when his neighbors' places on either hand were so trim?

The carelessly-kept shop showed up a hundred per cent. worse than it had before Clean-Up Day. Even old Bill Jones kept in some trim, and the meat markets began to rival each other in cleanliness.

The taxpayers began to speak with pride of Poketown. When they visited Middletown, or other villages that had previously looked down on the hillside hamlet above the lake, they were apt to say:

"Just come over and see our town. What? You ain't been in Poketown in two years? No wonder you don't know what you're talking about! Why, we put it all over you fellows here for clean streets, and shops, and nice-lookin' lawns and all that--and our school!"

Poketownites were proud of the reading-room, too, although Mr. Ma.s.sey's store was becoming a cramped place for it now. The shelves devoted to the circulating library were well crowded. The state appropriation had been spent carefully, and the new, well-bound books looked "mighty handsome" when visitors came into the place.

But the original intention for the place had never been lost sight of.

It had been made for the boys and young men of Poketown. They had fully appreciated it, and, Elder Concannon's prophecy to the contrary notwithstanding, the reading-room was never the scene of disorderly conduct.

Janice hoped the day would come when the reading-room a.s.sociation should have a building of its own,--not an expensive, ornate structure for which the taxpayers would be burdened, and the upkeep of which would keep the a.s.sociation poor for years; but a snug, warm, cheerful place which would actually be a club for the boys, and offer all the other benefits of a free library.

She knew already just where the building ought to stand. There was a certain empty lot on High Street which would give a library a prominent site. This lot was owned by old Elder Concannon.

"There've been miracles happened here in Poketown during the last year or so; if I have patience and wait to strike when the iron's hot, maybe _that_ miracle will come to pa.s.s," Janice told herself.

Elder Concannon had already begun to treat Janice in a much more friendly way than he had at one time. She believed that secretly he was interested in the library and reading-room. Sometimes he spent an hour or so there of an evening--especially if one of the boys would play checkers with him.

"He's an old nuisance," growled Marty to his cousin, on one occasion.

"He keeps some of the fellers out; they see him in there, with his grizzly old head and flapping cape-coat, and they stay out till he goes home. And, by jinks! I'm gittin' tired of being the goat and playin'

draughts with him."

"Marty," she said to him, with some solemnity, "if you saw that through the Elder's coming there and your entertaining him a bit, the inst.i.tution would in the end be vastly benefited, wouldn't you be _glad_ to play the goat?"

Marty's eyes snapped at her. He drew a long breath, and exclaimed: "Hi tunket! You don't mean that you've got the old Elder 'on the string' for us, Janice?"

"It's very rude of you to talk that way," said Janice, smiling. "I don't know what you mean by having the dear old gentleman 'on a string.' But I tell you in secret, Marty, that I _do_ hope he will be so much interested in the reading-room and library that some day he will give the a.s.sociation something very much worth while. He can afford it, for he hasn't chick nor child in the world."

"Ye don't mean it?" gasped Marty.